#AmWriting

Not everybody wants an author hanging around their office all day. Our guest is a best-selling education writer Jeff Selingo, already an expert on college and higher education who took that one step further for his latest: Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions . Jeff managed to embed himself in three admissions offices to write this book, a feat that will boggle the mind of anyone...

It’s the topic every author seems to love to hate: self-promotion. Sharing our work on social media, pitching ourselves to podcasts and reaching out to friends and colleagues to ask them to boost us up in various ways can feel hard—but it shouldn’t. It’s part of the deal—and the people around you don’t mind. In fact, they want to know when you have a new book or article out, especially if you’re a...

Lauren Ho is the author of the debut novel Last Tang Standing , which is getting HUGE buzz. It’s been called Bridget Jones meets Crazy Rich Asians, and it does deliver on that promise. Lauren is our very first guest to join us from Singapore, and it’s very late at night there but she managed to hold her own. We talk lawyers-turned-writers, selling a book from outside the US and UK, Goodreads revie...

Our guest this week is children’s fiction and YA author Julie Berry, and here’s why: she gave a talk at a conference about visualizing and imagery that Sarina has “been thinking about for 7 years.” That should tell you how much gold there is in this episode—all kinds of useful stuff about how we use images and senses to spark our own creativity and build a connection with our readers in every genr...

We’ve got a great interview for you today with a freelance journalist who does a different kind of work than any of us ever have—out in the field reporting on his favorite subject: reality adventure TV on trips rife with travel and danger and expense reports. I think you’ll love it. We talk about finding your topic and making that topic, well, topical by looking for what’s happening within the wor...

Write every day. Don’t read fiction while you’re writing fiction. My way or the highway. In a burst of frustration, we’re reminding ourselves—and you—that there’s no one way to get this job done, and if your way is counter to what some of the greats might tell you (we’re looking at you, Stephen King, even though we love you), that doesn’t mean it won’t work. A few links from the episode: Minisode:...

Hey campers—I hate reading you all a canned intro to our authors every time, so I’m winging it with our guest, Sonali Dev . I’m a fan of hers, so I feel like I know all the things. She’s the author of four straight-up romances, but her last-book-but one is the start of a series written in homage to Jane Austen, as is her latest, both set among the members of a politically ambitious Indian family i...

This week, Jess got a message from some family members who’d read the draft of her forthcoming book, The Addiction Innoculation. They had … thoughts. Those thoughts turned out to be nothing drastic—but the emotional roller coaster Jess rode while waiting to hear more was a doozy, and got us all thinking about how much of ourselves is exposed when we write non-fiction with a memoir element, how rea...

Kari Lizer is best known for her work in television, as writer and co-executive producer of Will & Grace and the creator of The New Adventures of Old Christine . When her essays about parenting took the shape of a book, she found that her real life provided more than enough material for a comedic memoir. Aren’t You Forgetting Someone? has it all - chickens, Kate Middleton’s bangs, psychics, and th...

We have trouble believing you haven’t already heard of our guest this week, Susan Wiggs, but just in case—she’s the author of many many novels, a multiple #1 New York Times bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. Her current novel, The Lost and Found Bookshop , is on sale now and her most recent bestseller, The Oysterville Sewing Circle , is just out in paperback. We talk crafting a story,...

This episode springs from a question asked in the #AmWriting Facebook group (if you’re not in it, you should be): Sarina has talked about her decision to be independently published, but we’ve never heard from Jess and KJ about why they go the traditional route. We discuss the three things you should think about when making the Indie/Traditional call, why you need to think hard about airport bookst...

You listen to podcasts. You love podcasts. (Perhaps we’re assuming here, but after all, we ARE a podcast.) And you’re a writer, with books or articles or ideas or other projects you want to get out into the world. Which just might mean you’ve imagined yourself as a guest on a podcast, sharing your work. (It’s the writer version of the sportscaster doing an imaginary play-by-play while a kid shoots...

This week we talk to Maria Konnikova about her new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win . After a series of devastating health and financial setbacks, Konnikova, a former New Yorker staffer whose other books include Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock and The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time set out to understand how luck, skill and human...

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva . PicMonkey . Crello . Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much...

Hey all—this week, a special mini episode on diversity in sources for non-fiction work, from light-hearted articles on favorite baby food flavors to seriously researched pieces for high-profile outlets. BIPOC, non-binary and women are outweighed by white men when it comes to who gets quoted in the news, whether the voice is adding an expert perspective or just a little local color. Here’s some hel...

Why stick to any one genre? Our guest this week is Catherine Newman: memoirist, middle grade novelist, etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 65 Highly Useful, Super-Important Things to Learn Before You’re Grown-Up . While she’s at it, she writes a cooking blog, co-authored a book on crafts for kids and edits ChopChop , a kids cooking magazine. And she pens frequent funny es...

When your book launches, you want to meet your readers where they are: anywhere people are talking about—or better yet, buying—books. Of course we want to support our local Indies (that’s why the links here are all to Bookshop.org )—but if there are readers on Amazon, we’re going to be there too. This week, we’re talking about how to get yourself set up on Amazon, Goodreads and Bookbub—and why you...

She might just have the perfect job. This week, Jess and I interview Abbe Wright, Senior Editor at ReadItForward.com and co-host of The Adaptables, a podcast that hashes over every detail of the movies and shows that are adapted from the books we love. Links from the pod : I wanted to break up. Then he got a tattoo of my name. Read It Forward Podcast The Adaptables The Longform Podcast Bookbento (...

Back in December 2019, we set #WriterGoals for 2020. We had no idea. This week, we go back in and revisit—which goals still stand? Which do we have to let go, and which just don’t feel right any more? Was there any point in setting these goals in the first place? In the end, we decide (not very cheerfully, it has to be admitted) that while our goals are necessarily changing, they’re always worth s...

Check out this Minisode where Jess discusses the mistakes she made writing her first book, and her new tricks to avoid making them again. Usually, Minisodes and Top Fives go out weekly to our supporters. But once in a while, we send one out to everyone—like this one. If you’d like more Minisodes (coming soon: Jess on Pitching Podcast Producers), or Top Fives like the Top Five Things to Know About...

Our guest today is Anne Bogel, most recently the author of Don’t Overthink It , which came out on March 3, 2020. Followers of this podcast who’ve taken my advice may have checked out her podcast, What Should I Read Next , where she talks books, reading and recommendations with guests—because I’m a huge fan. Anne is also the author of I’d Rather Be Reading and Reading People: How Seeing the World T...

This week, it’s Jess and I (KJ) talking to Olivia and Meghan from the Marginally podcast , which we love for its frank conversations about challenges and setbacks and day jobs and the struggle to keep your butt in the chair (sound familiar?). We talked about finding your writing people, the joys of keeping that day job, and the things that grow from grabbing a friend and starting the thing you wis...

Do mystery and thriller writers ever “pants” their stories? What’s it like to give a dark protagonist some elements of your own history? How much fun is it to fill a book with references to all of your favorite books ever? We cover those things and more with author Peter Swanson, whose new book, Eight Perfect Murders , is a hybrid of psychological thriller and who-dunnit that all three of us loved...

Hey #AmWriting Listeners. It’s April 13, 2020, and this episode, like the last, is a throwback to a simpler time, when we left our homes without masks and took baristas and lattes and a whole lot of other things for granted. So it may feel jarring that we’re not discussing the current situation, but at the time there was little to discuss—and we wouldn’t have, anyway, because our guests, Greer Hen...

Hey campers, KJ here. In this week’s episode, we talk to the brilliant Jessica Abel, a creativity coach extraordinaire, about how to get past whatever’s stopping you and develop a sustainable creative life. In so many ways, it’s a timely episode, and it WILL inspire you to get in there and get some work done. But it may also inspire you to wonder what planet we are living on, as we lightly discuss...